Is FO/FB viable in patch 1.11

[rolling stoned]

Is FO/FB viable in patch 1.11

Cold Skills

Ice Bolt (1) point. Prerequisite for Ice Blast.
Ice Blast (1) point. Prerequisite for Glacial Spike.
Glacial Spike (20) points. Prerequisite for Blizzard, secondary fast cast skill.

Frost Nova (1) point. Prerequisite for Blizzard.
Blizzard (20) points. Main Delay Spell.

Cold Mastery (1) point. Reduces the cold resistances of monsters effectively increasing the damage done by your cold spells to most monsters.

Fire Skills

Inferno – (1) point. Perquisite for Blaze.
Blaze – (1) point. Perquisite for FireWall.
Fire Wall – (1) point. Perquisite for Meteor.

Fire Bolt – (1) point. Adds synergies to Fireball and Meteor for each natural level.
Fire Ball – (20) points. Main fast cast spell. Adds synergies to Meteor and receives synergies from Fire Bolt and Meteor.
Meteor – (20) points. Secondary delay spell. Receives synergies from Fire Bolt and Fireball.

Fire Mastery – (1) point. Increases damage caused by all Fire spells.

Warmth (1) point. Increases the rate at which mana is regenerated.

Lightening Skills

Telekinesis (1) point. Prerequisite for Teleport.
Teleport (1) point.

this is the point distribution for the stickied blizz/Fb sorc. would this distribution work?


Cold Skills

Ice Bolt (1) point.
Ice Blast (1) point.
Glacial Spike (1) point.

Frost Nova (1) point.
Blizzard (1) point.
Frozen Orb (20) points Main Delay Spell.
Cold Mastery (15+) points

Fire Skills

Inferno – (1) point. Perquisite for Blaze.
Blaze – (1) point. Perquisite for FireWall.
Fire Wall – (1) point. Perquisite for Meteor.

Fire Bolt – (20) point.
Fire Ball – (20) points.
Meteor – (1) point or none and save the points for it and the pre-req skills (think it's 4 points counting meteor)

Fire Mastery – (20) points

Warmth (1) point. Increases the rate at which mana is regenerated.

Lightening Skills

Telekinesis (1) point.
Teleport (1) point.



Act 2 Frozen Merc W/ Infinity Thresher

Sound like it would work? How much Fcr should I aim for? I have a 35 viper than can be um'd and upped, or I can use a dusk coh and lose the Fcr for the extra skill point. What gear would you use and would the conviction help the combo of FO/FB alot or only slightly?

Also I want to note I went with Fire Mastery instead of maxing Meteor, because I think it's been noted somewhere on here that mastery gives a larger % damage per level than meteor. It also just hit me that I will most likely never use meteor enough to put a point into it so afew more points can go to some of the other skills.

:wave:

 

[PhatTrumpet]

Also I want to note I went with Fire Mastery instead of maxing Meteor, because I think it's been noted somewhere on here that mastery gives a larger % damage per level than meteor. It also just hit me that I will most likely never use meteor enough to put a point into it so afew more points can go to some of the other skills.

You're mistaken: read me.

The thread can be found here with the first revision starting on post #12, but the first half of it is just fluff and background information.

You're also likely mistaken about not using meteor. I find it invaluable for all act bosses besides Andariel, hell cows (can be played just like in 1.09), and waves two and three of Baal's minions.

Orb/FB is better suited for untwinked play because it saves a few skill points (I have one untwinked on single player that's lvl **). Other than that, Meteorb beats Orb/FB in every sense. If you aren't familiar with Meteorb you should definitely read sasja's guide in the Sorc Forum.

63% FCR is all you need for safe Teleporting. If you can hit 105% without sacrificing too much, go for it, but I find 63% to be sufficient.

For gear you can either go for full Tal's (which softcore people swear by for it's balance of damage, MF, and survivability... although I don't like that you can't wear TGod's with it) or something like my current Meteorb:

Shako (PTopaz)
Mara's
Fathom (Facet) / Stormshield ('Um')
Vipermagi ('Um')
Magefist
TGod's
Treks
SoJ
Dwarfstar

This gives max block, max resists (with a little help from anni and/or torch), lightning immunity (as long as you maintain that 85%LR), 45% DR, 70% FCR, and a bunch of MDR. If you can't get your hands on Mara's you can always use Tal's or a +2 rare/magical. If you can't get your hands on Fathom, HotO or even Wizzy will work just fine... etc.

Regarding 'Infinity', see this thread (same exact question). Note that if you do give your Merc 'Infinity', additional points invested in Cold Mastery will be less and less effective. In fact, I'd recommend only putting one point in CM and allowing +skills and 'Infinity' to take care of the rest. All the more reason to go with Meteor since you'll have so many spare skill points to invest in the fire tree, unless you want to use ES, in which case you should consider maxing TK.

 

[rolling stoned]

the thread on infinity only really seems concerned with the notion of breaking immunity. i just want to know if it will help FO for non-CI monsters in a noticeable way and FB for non-FI monsters. also do you think i should max meteor instead of fire bolt, since i guess meteor would be used more than fire bolt or should i only drop a point or two into mastery and then max bolt and meteor? last thing i don't understand is everyone saying not to put more than 1 in CM. does infinity just make CM completely useless or would the neg cold res from CM help atleast a little bit?

thanks in advance :thumbsup:

 

[PhatTrumpet]

the thread on infinity only really seems concerned with the notion of breaking immunity. i just want to know if it will help FO for non-CI monsters in a noticeable way and FB for non-FI monsters.

If you'd read a couple posts in...

It won't break many immunes, but Meteorb is dual-elemental, so that shouldn't really be an issue in the first place.

It will, however, increase your damage output noticeably (moreso on the fire side than on the cold side). It could also save you some points in Cold Mastery.

What part of that did not answer your question?

also do you think i should max meteor instead of fire bolt, since i guess meteor would be used more than fire bolt or should i only drop a point or two into mastery and then max bolt and meteor?

I thought I made that pretty clear. Meteor is useful; Fire Bolt is useless. Read sasja's Meteorb Guide if you haven't already, and skip to the end of that synergies/masteries tutorial to figure out how to get maximum Fire Ball damage.

last thing i don't understand is everyone saying not to put more than 1 in CM. does infinity just make CM completely useless or would the neg cold res from CM help atleast a little bit?

Resists cannot be lowered beyond -100%. 'Infinity' reduces fire/cold/lightning resists by 85%. Thus, for any monster that starts off with 0% cold resist, 'Infinity' plus an slvl 1 Cold Mastery will lower that monster's cold resist to -100% and any more points in CM or any +skills will go to waste. For a monster with 50% cold resist, however, you'd need 'Infinity' plus an slvl 10 CM to lower their cold resist to -100%, which is easily achieved with 1 point invested and some +skills gear.

Point is you'll rarely (if ever) encounter a monster that won't be reduced to -100% cold resist by 'Infinity', 1 point CM, and enough +skills gear.

 

[Socialism]

Point is you'll rarely (if ever) encounter a monster that won't be reduced to -100% cold resist by 'Infinity', 1 point CM, and enough +skills gear.

Excepting, of course, hard cold immunes, where -res only works at (I think) 1/6 or 17% effectiveness. These might not even be broken by infinity, and cold mastery has no effect on cold immunes (unless their immunity is broken).


Rolling Stoned, PT really knows what he's talking about. He's a forum encyclopedia about the stuff he knows.

 

[Hp_Sauce]

Excepting, of course, hard cold immunes, where -res only works at (I think) 1/6 or 17% effectiveness. These might not even be broken by infinity, and cold mastery has no effect on cold immunes (unless their immunity is broken).


Rolling Stoned, PT really knows what he's talking about. He's a forum encyclopedia about the stuff he knows.

According to the AS it's 1/5th when breaking immunities. Not a big difference, but just in case you cared or needed to know one day.

-hps

 

[Socialism]

Ah. Go figure.